Don't be misled by the title of this post. I don't mean "why" in the sense that I should've kept my sexuality a secret from my mother. I mean "why" in the sense here is a woman who prides herself on being so smarter and 3 steps ahead of everyone else, yet she couldn't figure it out herself. She had plenty of time as well as clues. In fact she should of pulled me out of the closest instead all those years I wasted denial.
Clue 1: It was 1979 and I was 5 years old. My favorite song that was constantly playing on my Mickey Mouse record player was Donna Summer's "Last Dance." Christ, I had a full length poster of her on my wall. You know the one with her sitting seductively "On the Radio".
Clue 2: My favorite character on the Muppet show was Miss Piggy. To take this obsession a step further, I used to go to kindergarten at least once or twice a week wearing her on my favorite baseball shirt. Not only was she on my shirt, but she was dressed up like the leather dude from the Village People riding a Harley, with big letters above her stating "Pig Power."
Clue 3: Going back to Donna Summer and the Village people. As I got older and into my teem years I had a vast collection of Cd's. The majority of them my gay icons. Yet, every Sunday, while Joan Crawford (Netty) was cleaning the house, she would go into my room and rummage through the Cd's and pull out Donna and the People's greatest hits as she "got mad at the dirt.".
Let me take a moment now to backtrack. I don't want to devote this post to Netty's denial but make you aware I had my own denial. You see I always felt like I was a late bloomer when it came to sex. I never talked or asked questions about it til I was in my early teens. I also never really figured out I was gay until I was 19. I can admit now I was suffering from my own cloud of denial. In junior high & especially high school I was always asking girls (none of which accepted an offer), yet when I found out my pinga could do more then go pee pee, I would always fantasize about the guy or guys I either watched in Sean's porn collection or the ones that were in the late movie on Skin(Cin)amax that night.
Then the faithful day came where I was off to college. I started at a little known college in Manchester, NH called Notre Dame College. While I was there I met my Resident Assistant (RA), Terry McDermott. Terry was a black man in his late 20's. He also had the most piercing green eyes. During orientation he came into my dorm room to chat sans his shirt. At that moment it was like a boulder hitting me that I figured it all out. Terry was also bisexual which I think help the process along because for that entire year I was there I could openly pine and profess my undying love for Terry. But like the girls in high school, Terry always shot me down. Yet in the long run he was right to do so. Since Terry and I were the only out gay/bisexual students, there weren't any others options to devote to my lust too.
Clue 4: Now back to Netty's denial. After I spent a year up in NH, I came back home and went to Salem State College in Salem , MA. With this new revelation, I decided to begin networking and joined the Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual group at school. All the while telling Netty I was at a newspaper meeting on Monday evenings. There I made a great group of friends and quickly was voted to the board of the group as a Secretary/coordinator. I also became really close, for a time, with the president, Carol Leturno. Carol was around my age and was a lesbian. We were always hanging out after school and on weekends. She was always coming home and having dinner with my family. According to my aunt, Netty always assumed Carol was my girlfriend. Although the flame may have dimmed a few degrees in personality, Carol is what we like to refer to as a "bull dyke". Yet, Netty never caught on. Never until of course, all my gay friends took me out to dinner for my birthday and Carol decided to invite Netty. And that is when Netty was able to put 2 and 2 together and finally ask me about my sexuality. It still was difficult to tell her and talk about being gay, but thank the lord she had a little more reserve than her mother Mimi and only discuss the sexuality part and not the actual sex acts.
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